跨文化商务交际案例分析

跨文化商务交际案例分析

How much is Hard Work?

Abstract:

In the intercultural business communication, Eastern and western people usually face

a cultural conflict, because of the differences in values, culture and the different

methods of behavior. This text embarks from the different features of culture between

China and the United States, analyzing the failure of cross-cultural communication,

and puts forward that the international business communication researchers should

consciously cultivate their cross-cultural awareness, enhance the sensitivity of cultural

differences, promote the integration of local culture and foreign culture, and decrease

or even eliminate faults in the international business communication, in order to

promote international business success.

摘要：

在跨文化商务交际中，东西方 民族常常会因为价值观念、文化积淀以及思维、

行为方式的不同而遭遇文化冲突。本文从 中美文化的不同特点出发，针对跨文

化交际失败的原因进行了分析，提出国际商务交际人 员应自觉培养自身的跨文

化意识，增强文化差异的敏感性，促进本土文化与外来文化的整 合，减少乃至

消除国际商务交际中的失误，促使国际商务成功开展。

Keywords:

Intercultural business communication, cultural conflict, cross-cultural awareness

关键词

:

跨文化商务交际、文化冲突、跨文化意识

Case

: A team of four Chinese from a large prestigious organization were in Honolulu

for ten days to meet with six American colleagues from several different US

universities. The ten scholars were getting together to finish up a project that they had

been working on together for more than three years. The data had been collected, with

great effort and many bureaucratic tangles, in several villages in central China. The

Chinese team had been tireless and super-humanly patient in working out every

problem so that the data collection had been extremely successful.

The researchers had been working separately for nearly a year on analysis,

reports and papers based on their data. The Americans felt very lucky to have

obtained the financial and institutional support to give the group an opportunity to get

together one last time

—

this time in the US

—

to read each other's papers, work out

problems with the analysis of data, fill in missing bits of information that

side

way. They were to meet for ten days in Honolulu.

The Chinese delegation arrived on Friday morning and was installed in a

comfortable, inexpensive hotel in Waikiki. When the Americans arrived last in the

afternoon everyone was eager to talk about what they had been doing and to begin to

work. They met for dinner and got right down to business at the home of one of the

researchers, who had recently taken a job at the University of Hawaii. Since everyone

was tired from travelling, they quit at ten o'clock, the Chinese were becoming very

distracted. The interpreter, Yang Bing, a Chinese who had been in the US about six

years and was married to an American, suggested that everyone break for lunch, but

he was ignored. The Americans called out for pizza at two and kept arguing, writing,

calculating, and discussing straight through the late meal. At seven, the Chinese were

sent back to their hotel at their request; the Americans didn't get back to the hotel until

ten.

Sunday was, as planned, another work day. The Chinese participated actively in

the discussion in the morning, and after lunch, which at Yuan Bing's urging was

served at one o'clock. By six, however, the Chinese were anxious to return to their

hotel, though the Americans were equally anxious to keep working. On Monday

morning, the Chinese announced that they were taking the afternoon off. The

Americans were rather annoyed, since they felt pressured to get as much as possible

accomplished in the short time they had together, but they agreed to arrange a car for

the Chinese.

The next two days the Chinese worked hard and cheerfully all morning and into

the evening, though they insisted on taking off a full hour for lunch at noon, and

another for dinner promptly at six, even when they were in the middle of something.

The Americans lunched on doughnuts and fruit provided at the conference center and

kept on working. The interpreter could sense tension and resentment building between

the two groups. Finally in Wednesday morning, the Chinese told the interpreter to

announce that they were going to spend the last 48 hours sightseeing. The Americans

were clearly dismayed, and protested. Yuan Bing decided it was time to stop outside

his role of interpreter and intervene.

例子：

中国 一家知名研究机构的四位学者来到了夏威夷火奴鲁鲁，他们将在这

里待十天，同来自美国 几所大学的六位研究同事进行学术交流，完成一项他们

已经共同研究了三年的项目。研究 材料的收集工作是由这四位中国学者在华中

的几个村子里进行的。他们不辞劳苦，成功地 收集并整理了该学术合作项目所

需要的所有材料。